News, Opinion, and Media Analysis on Cincinnati, Ohio and the World From a Unique Perspective

Friday, January 07, 2011

The West Chester Kroger Was Robbed at Gun Point, But Shhhh!

I'm not sure how much panic ran through the streets when the West Chester Kroger on Tylersville Road was robbed at gun point earlier this week. The Enquirer sure isn't helping fuel the panic. The Enquirer didn't allow comments to it's very, very short story on this incident. So we instead got next to nothing, a footnote.

The Website Westchesterbuzz.com (owned by the Enquirer) had a story about it. That link, however, comes up with a not found error, but it is still on Google's cache and can be read here. The blog postreferences a Pulse-Journal story I couldn't find there, but instead found on the Hamilton-Journal site, which lists more details and this gem of a fact:

Tombragel (Police Officer) said the suspect took off on foot following the incident, but it remains unknown if there was a getaway vehicle. This is the first time in Tombragel’s 14-year career that the West Chester Kroger has been robbed.

So, in other words this would be NEWS WORTHY, something out of the ordinary. Something people living in that community should know and read about.

If an inner-city or even an older inner-suburb Kroger was robbed, wouldn't the Enquirer have a banner headline with a long story outlining the crime problem in that city or community? At least they would have more than a tiny bare boned story. Does anyone at the Enquirer follow crime news in West Chester or do they only report in detail the good or sentimental news from West Chester?

I guess a story about a Kroger being robbed in West Chester the same day hometown boy John Boehner took office as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, wouldn't look good. A Kroger getting robbed for the first time in at least 14 years in the exurban Congressional District of the Speaker of the House on the same day he took office, isn't something worth at least a full story in the same newspaper providing live Twitter updates of the Speaker's swearing in ceremony.

The Eqnuirer certainly appears to be spinning crime news to make exurbanites feel safer. That's quality Journalism, for ya.

UPDATE: As a commenter pointed out, the story appeared to have been posted on the WestChesterBuzz.com. The only story that came up on Google is the "old" one I posted originally.

This isn't about urban/suburban. A huge number of white supremacists are regular commenters at the Enquirer web site; for the last year or so, they've been disabling comments on a lot of stories related to crimes, and especially crimes committed by an African-American, because the racists were filling the comments section with page after page of pure bile. Even now, you can find an awful lot of racist bile in the Enquirer comments, if you choose the right articles to read.

An acquaintance of mine has held that not only do they not report on the crimes in some suburbs but they don't have the number of police looking for crime that they do in the inner city. Consequently, it is more probable that there will be more arrests in the inner city thus making the prophecies come true. And there are more instances where no report is even filed in many cases in the suburbs, which keep property values up. In fact, there are more drugs being bought by the suburbanites that can be afforded in the inner city. And the Enquirer abets this phenomenon for many , often selfish, reasons.